True Love

Some may have a difficult time making the connection between "true love" and the things that some people find in the language of Ephesians 5. Fortunately, that is not because of what is actually said there, but rather in the way it is heard. The filters that we hear things through sometimes can impact what we hear in ways that has a lot more to do with us than in what it actually said.

In this section of Ephesians, Paul is turning his attention to what it looks like to live out the life of grace he has been describing up to this point. In the verses we are focusing on this week, he turns his attention to what this looks like in the marriage relationship.

As you read and reflect on the words of Ephesians what do you hear? A passage about who is in charge, or who gives and receives orders? Or do you hear a description of a relationship that flows out a kind of love that reflects the love of Christ. Does it matter if you read this passage with the picture of Jesus' expression of "authority" in John 13 in mind, or through the filters supplied by a culture that is all about power? It's amazing how the filters we use can enhance or distort what we hear.

Husbands loving wives like Christ loves the church does not look like exercising power or control. Wives loving husbands does not look like acting in unsupportive or diminishing ways. In both cases, it involves profound respect and a love that always puts the interests of others first God does not love in a way that diminishes my freedom or self-respect. That is what Pastor Jon is exploring with us in the sermon this week. If you would like to listen to the sermon again, or perhaps for the first time, you can access our sermon library by clicking here.

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Ephesians 5

(TNIV)

15 Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, 16 making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. 17 Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. 18 Do not get drunk on wine,which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit, 19 speaking to one another with psalms, hymns and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, 20 always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church,his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing[b] her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, people have never hated their own bodies, but they feed and care for them, just as Christ does the church— 30 for we are members of his body. 31 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”[c]32 This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.